Your calorie deficit might actually be slowing down fat loss progress…

Is it possible that you’re eating too little to actually lose weight? The short answer is yes... but not for the reason you think!

When you’re eating super low calories it’s much harder to stick with those calories consistently.

You’re hungrier and feeling more restricted which means there’s a good chance you’re doing a little extra untracked snacking, extra tastes, or fudging your portion sizes. All of this combined can pull you out of a calorie deficit.

It also means you likely have less energy to do things. So maybe you’re skipping extra cardio sessions, not going for as many walks outside, or reducing household chores because you’re too tired. All of these things combined will lower TDEE so even if you’re truly eating lower calories, it might no longer yield a true deficit.

So it’s not that you’re not eating enough to lose weight. It’s that you’re likely eating more than you think and moving less because it’s much harder to stay consistent when calories are super low. Eating in too drastic of a calorie deficit isn’t the reason why you’re not seeing progress. You’re not losing weight because you’re not actually in a calorie deficit at all.

This was something that I recently navigated with a new nutrition client. She had been in a deficit for a couple months and was losing weight eating 1700-1800 calories. As time went on her calories went lower and lower and when she came to me she was eating 1375 calories and her fat loss had stalled.

So what gives?!

After some data collection, we realized that although she was diligently eating 1375 calories during the week, by Saturday she was super bored of chicken and sweet potato and ended up eating out as an alternative. Even though she was making healthy choices, those meals combined with a few tracking errors that we identified meant she wasn’t eating in a calorie deficit at all.

So what did we do?

We raised her calories and spiced up her weekday meals so she was more excited about her daily food options. We bumped her up to 1650 calories which improved consistency and she dropped a pound in her first week.

Lower calories alone are not the reason why you’re not seeing the progress you expected. But the lack of consistency that so often accompanies it is.

Train With Moxie